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on Labor Markets - Supply, Demand, and Wages |
| By: | Storm, Eduard; Gonschor, Myrielle; Schmidt, Marc Justin |
| Abstract: | We study how artificial intelligence (AI) affects workers' earnings and employment stability, combining German job vacancy data with administrative records from 2017-2023. Identification comes from changes in workers' exposure to local AI skill demand over time, instrumented with national demand trends. We find no meaningful displacement or productivity effects on average, but notable skill heterogeneity: expert workers with deep domain knowledge gain while non-experts often lose, with returns shaped by occupational task structures. We also document AI-driven reinstatement effects toward analytic and interactive tasks that raise earnings. Overall, our results imply distributional concerns but also job-augmenting potential of early AI technologies. |
| Keywords: | AI, Online Job Vacancies, Skill Demand, Worker-level Analysis, Employment, Earnings, Expertise |
| JEL: | D22 J23 J24 J31 O33 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:333893 |
| By: | Juan C. Chaparro; Nataly Corredor-Martinez; Eleonora Dávalos; Leonardo Fabio Morales |
| Abstract: | The advent of digital technology and widespread internet access has transformed how firms advertise job vacancies and how job seekers conduct their searches. This paper presents a novel methodology for identifying job-related skills and knowledge from the textual descriptions of online job postings, using data from Colombia’s largest public online job board and the O*NET database. By analyzing posted wages and applying a data-driven approach to identify skill requirements, the study estimates the wage returns associated with specific skills and knowledges in the formal Colombian labor market. The findings indicate that, within a given occupation, the prevalence of certain basic skill categories such as mathematics, writing, time management, and instructing is associated with higher wage returns. Notably, most of the skill categories with significant positive returns are not occupation-specific; rather, they represent transferable capabilities that enhance performance across a wide range of tasks and occupations. *****RESUMEN: El auge de la tecnología digital y el acceso generalizado a internet ha transformado la forma en que las empresas anuncian vacantes laborales y cómo los buscadores de empleo realizan sus búsquedas. Este artículo presenta una metodología para identificar habilidades y conocimientos relacionados con el trabajo a partir de las descripciones textuales de ofertas de empleo en línea, utilizando datos del mayor portal público de empleo en línea de Colombia y la base de datos O*NET. Al analizar los salarios publicados y aplicar un enfoque basado en datos para identificar los requisitos de habilidades, el estudio estima los retornos salariales asociados con habilidades y conocimientos específicos en el mercado laboral formal colombiano. Los hallazgos indican que, dentro de una ocupación determinada, la prevalencia de ciertas categorías de habilidades básicas como matemáticas, redacción, gestión del tiempo e instrucción está asociada con mayores retornos salariales. Cabe destacar que la mayoría de las categorías de habilidades con retornos positivos significativos no son específicas de una ocupación; más bien, representan capacidades transferibles que mejoran el desempeño en una amplia gama de tareas y ocupaciones. |
| Keywords: | Online job portals, Vacancies, Occupational skill requirements, Wage disparities, Labor markets in developing countries, Portales de empleo en línea, Vacantes, Requisitos de habilidades ocupacionales, Disparidades salariales, Mercados laborales en países en desarrollo |
| JEL: | J23 J24 J31 J63 O15 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdr:borrec:1337 |
| By: | Démurger, Sylvie (CNRS); Lin, Carl (Bucknell University); Schmillen, Achim (World Bank); Wang, Dewen (World Bank) |
| Abstract: | Minimum wages are found to have an inconclusive impact on poverty. Using China’s individual-level panel dataset combined with county-level minimum wages, our paper shows that minimum wages have a moderate yet sustained effect on poverty reduction. The results show a two-sided effect: higher minimum wages help pull some workers out of poverty, while simultaneously pushing others in. This dynamic of larger “pulling” effects being counterbalanced by smaller “pushing” effects explains why existing studies often find that minimum wages have a negligible or minimal impact on poverty reduction. Notably, the poverty reduction effect is most pronounced for female workers. |
| Keywords: | poverty, minimum wages, China |
| JEL: | I32 J3 J88 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18326 |
| By: | Siwar Khelifa; Jie He |
| Abstract: | This paper provides the first evidence from a developing-country setting on the long-term educational impacts of early-life exposure to a major environmental regulation. We study China's 1998 Two Control Zones policy and implement a difference-in-differences design comparing adjacent birth cohorts in targeted and non-targeted counties. We find no detectable effects of early-life exposure to the policy on long-term educational outcomes. Across a wide range of measures, including high school attendance, academic versus vocational track placement, and high-quality school attendance around age 15, as well as college entrance exam participation, exam scores, and post-secondary enrollment around age 18, the estimates are statistically indistinguishable from zero. These null results are robust across alternative specifications and hold in subgroups defined by gender and maternal education. |
| Keywords: | Education, environmental regulation, TCZ policy, early-life conditions, China |
| JEL: | I18 I24 J24 Q51 Q56 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:irn:wpaper:25-08 |
| By: | Sebastian Leitner (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Stella Sophie Zilian (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw) |
| Abstract: | This paper addresses the disproportional effects of digitalisation across age by investigating (i) within-job age segregation in tasks by digital intensity; (ii) within-job age disparities in digital upskilling; (iii) age inequalities in wage returns to digital job tasks; and (iv) the role of gender in this age segregation and inequalities. The analysis is based on data of Cedefop’s second wave of the European Skills and Jobs Survey (ESJS2), conducted in 2021. First results of the analysis show that even when controlling for occupation-industry job pairs apart from using other explanatory variables, age segregation and gender gaps are prevalent in the case of digital skill intensity of tasks performed in the jobs of employees, though not in the case of digital upskilling via training measures. Applying the same appropriate controls, we also find that higher within-job digital skill intensity is associated with higher hourly wages. Gender wage gaps are sizable across all skill intensity categories in addition to widening in older age groups. |
| Keywords: | Age inequalities, earnings, gender gaps, job segregation, digital skills, tasks |
| JEL: | J01 J08 J14 J16 J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wii:wpaper:269 |
| By: | Cesar Barreto; Antoine Bertheau; Dogan Gulumser; Alexander Hijzen; Astrid Kunze; Marta Lachowska; Anne Sophie Lassen; Salvatore Lattanzio; Benjamin Lochner; Stefano Lombardi; Jody Meekes; Balazs Murakozy; Oskar Nordstrom Skans; Marco Palladino |
| Abstract: | We quantify the role of gender-specific firm wage premiums in explaining the private-sector gender gap in hourly wages using a harmonized research design across 11 matched employer-employee datasets—ten European countries and Washington state, USA. These premiums contribute to the gender wage gap through two channels: women’s concentration in lower-paying firms (sorting) and women receiving lower premiums than men within the same firm (pay-setting). We find that firm wage premiums account for 10 to 30 percent of the gender wage gap. While both mechanisms matter, sorting is the predominant driver of the firm contribution to the gender wage gap in most countries. We document three patterns that are broadly consistent across countries: (1) women’s sorting into lower-paying firms increases with age; (2) women are more concentrated in low-paying firms with a high share of part-time workers; and (3) women receive about 90 percent of the rents that men receive from firm surplus gains. |
| Keywords: | Gender wage gap; Firms; Cross country comparison |
| JEL: | C52 J24 J31 J71 |
| Date: | 2025–12–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedhwp:102275 |
| By: | Leonardo Bonilla-Mejía; Luz A. Florez; Didier Hermida; Francisco Lasso-Valderrama; Leonardo Fabio Morales; José Pulido |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of payroll subsidies targeting SMEs on labor market formalization in developing economies, where informal labor markets are prevalent. Our evidence is based on a payroll subsidy program in Colombia (PAEF-stage 2) targeting firms under 50 employees that subsidized up to 50% of the payroll. We exploit detailed administrative records, as well as the discontinuity in the eligibility threshold and the timing of the program implementation to estimate the causal effect of the program. Our findings indicate that the subsidy had a positive and persistent effect on formal employment. The impact is larger for industries receiving more subsidies but does not vary across employees’ gender. Cost-benefit analysis shows that the program was financially sustainable, with internal rates of return ranging from 58% to 169%. *****RESUMEN: En este trabajo se analiza el impacto de los subsidios a la nómina dirigidos a pequeñas y medianas empresas sobre la formalización laboral en una economía en desarrollo, donde los mercados laborales informales son predominantes. Nuestra evidencia se basa en la segunda fase del Programa de Apoyo al Empleo Formal (PAEF) en Colombia, que otorgó subsidios de hasta el 50% de la nómina a empresas con menos de 50 empleados. Se usan registros administrativos detallados, así como la discontinuidad en el umbral de elegibilidad y el momento de implementación del programa, para estimar su efecto causal. Los resultados indican que el subsidio tuvo un efecto positivo y persistente sobre el empleo formal. El impacto fue mayor en los sectores que recibieron mayores montos de subsidio, pero no presentó variaciones según el género de los trabajadores. El análisis costo-beneficio muestra que el programa fue financieramente sostenible, con tasas internas de retorno que oscilan entre el 58% y el 169%. |
| Keywords: | Payroll subsidies, small and medium enterprises, informality, developing economies, Subsidios a la nómina, pequeñas y medianas empresas, informalidad, economías en desarrollo |
| JEL: | J68 J38 J23 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdr:borrec:1338 |
| By: | Larissa Fuchs; Matthias Heinz; Pia Pinger; Max Thon |
| Abstract: | We conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with a leading technology firm to study how highlighting flexibility and career advancement in job advertisements causally affects the applicant pool. Highlighting career advancement increases the number of applications from men for entry-level positions and attracts additional applicants with strong qualifications and a good fit, which in turn leads to more interview invitations. By contrast, highlighting flexibility increases applications from both women and men at the entry level but provides limited evidence of attracting higher-quality or better-fit applicants. A complementary survey experiment among STEM students shows how job advertisements shape beliefs about the firm’s job characteristics and work environment. Overall, our results show that the amenities firms choose to highlight can powerfully influence both the size and characteristics of their applicant pool. |
| Keywords: | hiring, field experiments, job advertisements, gender |
| JEL: | M51 M52 D22 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12331 |
| By: | William Skoglund (Uppsala History of Inequality and Labor Lab, Uppsala University); Jakob Molinder (Uppsala History of Inequality and Labor Lab, Uppsala University, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the role of unionization in shaping income distributions during the Great Leveling, comparing Sweden and the United States—two countries with markedly different union traditions and levels of organization. Using data from the 1940 and 1950 U.S. censuses and Swedish tax registers, we exploit plausibly exogenous variation in unionization and estimate distributional effects using quantile regressions and interactions with worker characteristics. Our results indicate that stronger unions elevated earnings in both countries, but the elasticity was roughly double in the United States compared with Sweden. U.S. unions also had a more radical impact on the earnings distribution: the effect at the 10th percentile was almost twice that at the 90th percentile while also reducing earnings differences between workers with different levels of skill and education. We relate the difference between the two countries to their patterns of union membership: in the United States, it was concentrated among lower-skilled workers, whereas in Sweden it was high across the occupational distribution and among employees with both low and high levels of education, shaping their incentives to negotiate higher wages and compress the earnings distribution. Our study shows that unions played a pivotal role in the Great Leveling in two countries at opposite ends of the labor-market-regime continuum. While there appears to be a trade-off between unions’ organizational reach and impact on wages, Sweden’s more encompassing unions have been more successful in engendering a compressed income distribution. U.S. unions have instead gradually lost their power to affect outcomes. |
| Keywords: | Inequality, Unions |
| JEL: | J31 J51 N41 N44 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0292 |
| By: | Biroli, Pietro (University of Bologna); Di Girolamo, Amalia (University of Birmingham); Sorrenti, Giuseppe (University of Lausanne); Totarelli, Maddalena (Ifo Institute for Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | Educational disparities often limit students' access to relatable role models, constraining their aspirations and educational outcomes. We design and implement the Online Role Model Mentoring Program (ORME), a scalable, low-cost intervention connecting middle school students with successful role models from similar backgrounds. Using a randomized controlled trial with over 450 students in Campania, Italy, we find that ORME improves students' beliefs about the returns to effort, increases alignment between aspirations and expectations, and boosts school effort. Treated students also become more academically ambitious: they are more likely to enroll in academically oriented tracks and perform better on standardized language tests. These findings show that brief online mentoring sessions can have a meaningful impact on students’ attitudes and choices at a critical stage of schooling, highlighting a promising tool to support students in low-opportunity contexts. |
| Keywords: | role models, aspirations, mentoring, school interventions |
| JEL: | I21 I24 J24 D91 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18325 |
| By: | Sita Slavov |
| Abstract: | This paper presents evidence suggesting that delayed Social Security claiming by husbands – resulting in an actuarially enhanced benefit – attenuates the financial shock of widowhood for their wives. Under Social Security survivor benefit rules, primary earners (usually husbands) pass on the actuarial adjustments from delayed claiming to their surviving spouses. Using a staggered difference-in-differences approach, I find women whose husbands delayed claiming to full retirement age or later face a post-widowhood increase of 6.9 percentage points in the probability of falling below the 5th percentile of the pre-widowhood income distribution. This effect is almost 12 percent smaller for each year of delayed claiming by the husband (though the attenuation is concentrated in the first 4 years of widowhood). The general findings are robust to instrumenting for the husband’s claiming age using the loosening of the retirement earnings test in 2000 – a policy change that incentivized earlier claiming. |
| JEL: | D14 H55 J26 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34612 |
| By: | Ã kos Aczél (Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Central Bank of Hungary)); Lajos Tamás Szabó (Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Central Bank of Hungary)) |
| Abstract: | We examine peer effects in mortgage borrowing decisions. We find that having financially literate colleagues improves the borrowing decisions of financially less literate co†workers. Interest rates on the mortgage loans of these co†workers are significantly lower than for similar employees, whose peers have lower financial literacy. The magnitude of the effect is economically significant, amounting to roughly 4 to 5 monthly instalments until maturity. The results are heterogeneous: advice is more valuable for borrowers with low mathematical skills, and the peer effect is considerably higher in districts, where competition is weaker among banks. We also find that introducing a standardised loan product can offset the impact of the peer effect by making the decision problem of borrowers less complex. |
| Keywords: | peer effects, skills, borrowing decisions, mortgage loan, standardised loan product |
| JEL: | J24 G21 G41 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mnb:wpaper:2025/3 |
| By: | Margaret Leighton (University of St Andrews); Irina Merkurieva (University of St Andrews) |
| Abstract: | This paper extracts aspirations from texts written in childhood by members of a British longitudinal cohort and explores how these relate to later life outcomes. Applying Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools to short essays collected at age 11, we identify four aspiration themes: family, hobbies, financial success, and career. The weight of these four themes varies substantially across respondents, with girls on average placing more weight on family, and boys on financial success. Aspirations extracted using our method are strongly predictive of later life outcomes, even when controlling for detailed measures of early life environment, ability, and family background. These associations are often highly heterogeneous by gender; for example, family-related aspirations are associated with higher educational attainment for men, but lower educational attainment for women. |
| Keywords: | Aspirations; Education; Natural Language Processing; NCDS |
| JEL: | J24 J26 Z13 |
| Date: | 2025–12–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:san:econdp:2505 |
| By: | Martin Eckhoff Andresen; Andreas Kostøl; Ross Milton; Corina Mommaerts; Luisa Wallossek |
| Abstract: | This paper examines monthly earnings volatility and its transmission to household earnings volatility using Norwegian data on the universe of monthly pay histories. We document substantial month-to-month earnings changes: within a job, while over one-quarter of months have no earnings changes, another quarter have at least a 23% change. Accounting for multiple jobs and non-employment increases volatility, while aggregating to households reduces volatility by 12-35%. Event studies around job loss and couple formation, along with decomposition and bounding exercises, show that most of this decline reflects pooling effects rather than sorting or responses to shocks. |
| Keywords: | monthly earnings volatility, Earnings pooling, marital sorting, added worker effects |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12323 |
| By: | Ashley C. Craig; Thomas Lloyd; Dylan Moore; Ashley Craig |
| Abstract: | How should taxes on externality-generating activities be adjusted if they are regressive? In our model, the government raises revenue using distortionary income and commodity taxes. If more or less productive people have identical tastes for externality-generating consumption, the government optimally imposes a Pigouvian tax equal to the marginal damage from the externality. This is true regardless of whether the tax is regressive. But, if regressivity reflects different preferences of people with different incomes rather than solely income effects, the optimal tax differs from the Pigouvian benchmark. We derive sufficient statistics for optimal policy, and use them to study carbon taxation in the United States. Our empirical results suggest an optimal carbon tax that is remarkably close to the Pigouvian level, but with higher carbon taxes for very high-income households if this is feasible. When we allow for heterogeneity in preferences at each income level as well as across the income distribution, our optimal tax schedules are further attenuated toward the Pigouvian benchmark. |
| Keywords: | optimal taxation, externalities, corrective taxation, income taxation, climate change, carbon tax, commodity taxation, redistribution |
| JEL: | H21 H23 Q52 Q54 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12317 |
| By: | Bhalotra, Sonia R. (University of Warwick); Clarke, Damian (University of Chile); Venkataramani, Atheendar (Massachusetts General Hospital) |
| Abstract: | We leverage the introduction of the first antibiotic therapies in 1937 to examine the long-run effects of early-childhood pneumonia on adult educational attainment, employment, income, and work-related disability. Using census data, we document large average improvements across all outcomes, alongside substantial heterogeneity by gender and race. Among women, health gains led to changes in marriage and fertility that partially offset their labor market improvements. Among Black Americans, we uncover a pronounced gradient linked to systemic racial discrimination in the pre-Civil Rights era: individuals born in more discriminatory Jim Crow states realized much smaller gains than those born in less discriminatory states, despite larger reductions in pneumonia exposure. There is no similar gradient among white Americans. Together, these findings highlight the central role of institutional environments in shaping whether investments in early-life health translate into long-run socioeconomic gains. |
| Keywords: | infectious disease, institutions, systemic discrimination, disability, income, education, human capital production, race, medical innovation, early childhood, pneumonia, antibiotics, sulfa drugs |
| JEL: | I10 I14 J71 H70 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18327 |
| By: | Grenet, Juliet (Paris School of Economics and CNRS); Grönqvist, Hans (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)); Hertegård, Edvin (SOFI, Stockholm University); Nybom, Martin (IFAU, Uppsala University); Stuhler, Jan (Department of Economics, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) |
| Abstract: | We study how students adjust their early career choices in response to economic crises and how these decisions affect their long-run labor market outcomes. Focusing on Sweden’s deep recession in the early 1990s—which hit the manufacturing and construction sectors hardest—we first show that students whose fathers lost jobs in these sectors were more likely to choose career paths tied to less-affected industries. These students later experienced better labor market outcomes, including higher employment and earnings. Our findings suggest that informational frictions are a key obstacle to structural change and identify career choice as an important channel through which recessions reshape labor markets in the long run. |
| Keywords: | High School Major; Recession; Information Frictions; Structural Change |
| JEL: | E32 I25 J24 J63 |
| Date: | 2025–12–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1545 |
| By: | Hamish W. Low; Costas Meghir; Luigi Pistaferri; Alessandra Voena |
| Abstract: | The 1996 U.S. welfare reform introduced time limits on welfare receipt. We use quasi-experimental evidence and a rich life cycle model to understand the impact of time limits on different margins of behavior and well-being. We stress the impact of marital status and marital transitions on mitigating the cost and impact of time limits. Time limits cause women to defer claiming in anticipation of future needs and to work more, effects that depend on the probabilities of marriage and divorce. They also cause an increase in employment among single mothers and reduce divorce, but their introduction costs women 0.7% of lifetime consumption, gross of the redistribution of government savings. |
| Keywords: | Welfare; Welfare reform; Limited commitment |
| JEL: | D91 H53 J12 J21 |
| Date: | 2025–12–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedhwp:102278 |
| By: | Thomas Baudin; Yajna Govind; Simone Moriconi |
| Abstract: | Do symbolic aspects of integration policies affect migrants’ integration into the host society? In this paper, we study the effects of a symbolic change in birthright citizenship rules in France that requires second-generation immigrants to state their allegiance on their integration. Adopting a Difference-in-Differences approach, we show that, contrary to its stated aim of fostering a greater sense of belonging, this policy led to a loss of national identity and an increase in perceptions of discrimination among the target group. We document that these effects are not driven by changes in naturalization rates or an increased general hostility. We also show that while the reform did not affect their economic or political integration, it did reduce their cultural integration, as measured by religiosity and naming patterns. Overall, rather than promoting integration, such migration policies can lead to a backlash. |
| Keywords: | naturalization, migrant integration, policy backlash, national identity |
| JEL: | J1 J15 J21 J24 J61 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12362 |
| By: | Massimo Anelli, Paolo Pinotti, Zachary Porrecw |
| Abstract: | We study the short- and long-term effects of organized crime across neighborhoods in U.S. cities by exploiting the migration of Sicilian Mafia members in the 1920s who fled a large-scale repression campaign in Italy. Using newly linked administrative and historical data from the U.S. Census, Social Security records, and declassified files of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, we show that neighborhoods hosting enclaves of migrants from Sicilian towns targeted by the repression later became centers of Italo-American Mafia activity. These neighborhoods experienced higher violence, incarceration, and financial exclusion in the short run, but higher educational attainment and employment in the long run. The results suggest that while the arrival of organized criminal networks initially intensified conflict and exclusion, their subsequent consolidation generated localized economic spillovers, helping to explain the long-term resilience and persistence of organized crime. |
| Keywords: | Electoral Rules, Immigration, Salience |
| JEL: | D72 J24 J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:baf:cbafwp:cbafwp25259 |
| By: | Katrine M. Jakobsen; Thomas H. Jorgensen; Hamish W. Low |
| Abstract: | We study how fertility decisions interact with labor supply and human capital accumulation of men and women. First, we use longitudinal Danish register data and tax reforms to show that increases in wages of women decrease fertility while increases in wages of men increase fertility. Second, we estimate a life-cycle model to quantify the importance of fertility adjustments for labor supply and long-run gender inequality. Wage elasticities of women are more than 10% lower if fertility cannot be adjusted. Finally, we show that the long-term consequences of human capital depreciation around childbirth are an important driver of the long-run gender wage gap in the model. |
| Keywords: | Fertility; Labor supply; human capital accumulation; Gender inequality; Tax reform |
| JEL: | D15 H24 J13 J22 |
| Date: | 2025–12–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedhwp:102277 |
| By: | Alexander Ahammer; Martin Halla; Pia Heckl; Rudolf Winter-Ebmer |
| Abstract: | Long-term unemployment among older workers is particularly difficult to overcome. We study the impacts of a large-scale job guarantee program that offered up to two years of fully subsidized employment to long-term unemployed individuals aged 50 and above. Using a sharp age-based discontinuity in eligibility, we find that participation increased regular, unsubsidized employment by 43 percentage points two years after the program ended. The gains are driven by transitions into new firms and industries, rather than continued subsidized employment, and we find no evidence of displacement effects for non-participants or spillovers to family members. The program had no measurable short-run health effects. |
| Keywords: | long-term unemployment, temporary job guarantee, subsidized employment, health status |
| JEL: | J64 J08 J78 I14 H51 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12340 |
| By: | Marianna Brunetti (CEIS & DEF, University of Rome "Tor Vergata", GLO and Cefin); Annalisa Fabretti (CEIS & DEF, University of Rome "Tor Vergata") |
| Abstract: | This study is the first modeling academic career progression using multi-state models, an approach that allows to compute additional quantities of interest never produced in this context, such as the probability of attaining specific academic positions over given time horizons and the average time required to reach them. Potential gender differences along these dimensions are assessed by comparing these metrics computed for male and female scholars separately, while accounting for productivity, individual preferences, and even seniority, which are often cited as explanations for women’s disadvantage in academic careers. Leveraging a suitably-built highly informative dataset covering the universe of professors having worked in Italian universities between 2016 and 2021, we show a gap in the probabilities of career advancement that reduces with the career horizon but never vanishes, stabilizing around 2 (3) percentage points for those starting their career as assistant (associate) professors. In addition, we find that female scholars require up to two additional years to reach the highest academic rank (full professorship) compared with otherwise equivalent male counterparts, a phenomenon we label the “pink queue”. Finally, we find a systematic misalignment in career advancement probabilities between male and female scholars with comparable productivity, whereby women achieve the same advancement chances as men only when they attain higher productivity levels, suggesting the presence of a potential “double standard”. |
| Keywords: | Gender gap, Markov chain, university, productivity, pink queue, double standard |
| JEL: | J16 J71 |
| Date: | 2025–12–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:618 |
| By: | Peter S. Arcidiacono; Attila Gyetvai; Arnaud Maurel; Ekaterina Jardim |
| Abstract: | This paper applies some of the key insights of dynamic discrete choice models to continuous-time job search models. Our framework incorporates preference shocks into search models, resulting in a tight connection between value functions and conditional choice probabilities. In this environment, we establish constructive identification of the model parameters, including the wage offer distributions off-and on-the-job. Our framework makes it possible to estimate nonstationary search models in a simple and tractable way, without having to solve any differential equations. We apply our method using Hungarian administrative data. Longer unemployment durations are associated with lower offer arrival rates, resulting in accepted wages falling over time. Counterfactual simulations indicate that increasing unemployment benefits by 90 days results in a 14-day increase in expected unemployment duration. |
| Keywords: | job search, Identification, dynamic discrete choice |
| JEL: | J64 C31 C41 J31 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12320 |
| By: | Dennis J. Snower |
| Abstract: | Whereas labor markets are traditionally viewed as machine-like environments – where agents, coordinated by price signals, solve constrained optimization problems or adhere to established heuristics – this paper views labor markets as human ecosystems, containing living things, namely, the human beings who participate in these markets. Living things adapt to their environment and evolve across their domains of life. Consequently, activities in labor markets cannot be understood independently of their social and political foundations. Labor markets are embedded in social, economic, political and environmental systems, and their adaptiveness to their social and natural environments. In this context, the insider-outsider theory may be generalized by reconceptualizing insiders and outsiders in terms of their relative adaptive advantages and the structural barriers to adaptation. The functions and misfunctions of adaptively embedded labor markets can be specified in terms of the adaptiveness as systems or the adaptiveness of the components of these systems. The insider-outsider theory indicates why there is no “invisible hand” whereby agents that are individually adaptive will lead to a labor market that is systemically adaptive at the labor-market or economy-wide levels. The ecosystemic approach also involves a reconceptualization of agents operating in labor markets, implying a new theories of the firm and workers. The first- and second-best policy implications are briefly surveyed. |
| Keywords: | insider–outsider theory, labor markets, complex adaptive systems, evolutionary political economy, labor market segmentation |
| JEL: | J41 J63 J64 D23 D70 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12324 |